Sweet Hush

  He held out his right hand. My ice pick lay in it. “Don’t underestimate me,” he said. “And I won’t underestimate you. You have one chance to stay out of a Mexican prison. They don’t care if you’re only fourteen. Don’t even think about running, or you’ll be arrested. Keep quiet and follow me. I’m taking you back to America. We’re going home. To Chicago. That or a Mexican prison? You choose.”

  I swallowed my pride, took my stolen weapon back, hid it in a pants’ pocket, got up, and went to my mother’s body. I covered her face carefully, tucking the sheet around her dead, dark hair, touching it with my fingertips one more time, whispering to her without words.

  I wanted to save the world for you, but I couldn’t.

  THERE’S SOMETHING I need to tell you about my wife, Edwina,” Al said, the first time we walked into their big apartment building on a snowy winter day in downtown Chicago. “She’s a little obsessed with appearances.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” I grunted. I followed him past a doorman who stared at me as we stepped onto an elevator. I carried a duffel bag filled with my worldly possessions. Not much, including a pair of coyote skulls I kept as talismans for my own loneliness. I didn’t have to look in the mirror to know I was big and skinny and homely at fourteen, with patches of acne on my cheeks and a boxer’s nose and silences so deep people assumed I didn’t know how to talk. Al, on the other hand, was a solid, squeaky-clean citizen. He talked all the time, and he carried a fine leather overnight bag with his initials stitched on one side. The elevator lifted off.

  “What did you mean about your wife?” I finally asked. He pointed to his satchel. “This was my twenty-sixth birthday present. Edwina gave it to me last year. It cost a thousand dollars. She bought herself one just like it. I said, ‘Honey, we’re rookie prosecutors in the district attorney’s office. People will think we’re taking bribes from the mob.’ She answered, ‘Honey, no mobster could afford this leather.’ Her family’s rich. The Habershams. Of the Maryland Habershams. They’re in shipping.” He smiled beneath dark, gaunt eyes. Yeah, we definitely had the same eyes. “The first Habersham came over on the Mayflower. They were very, very English. Edwina’s descended from a duchess.”

  I didn’t know why he was telling me all that. I kept handing him the I-don’t-give-a-shit treatment, but he kept luring me in. He forced me to keep listening. “The Mayflower,” he repeated.

  I shrugged. “So what about the fucking Jacobs? How did our family get here from Poland?”

  “On a steamship in 1902, bunking one level below the goats and chickens. I think our most famous ancestor was a brick layer named Ludvig.”

  “Then why’d Edwina marry you?”

  “Because she thinks I’m brilliant and honorable and special, and we’re going to save the world together. Boy, have I got her fooled.”

  Save the world. Right. Bribing Mexican policemen to save me was one thing. But saving the world? No. He was too soft for that. That was my job.

  “Now, about Edwina,” he went on. As the elevator rose he told me they’d met in law school. There had been only five women in their 1970 graduating class. Al had been the one guy who took Edwina Habersham seriously and who didn’t feel threatened by her. She was rich and mouthy and smart—she ranked at the top of the class. Al was near the “low-middle,” he said diplomatically. When one of their professors called her a ball-busting lesbian, Al threatened to punch him. Edwina defended Al before the law school’s administrative board, and won his case.

  “We went out on our first date that night,” Al told me. “It was love at first defense.”

  Suddenly we reached his apartment door, and an irrational sense of panic set in. I debated shoving Al out of my way and making a run for the emergency staircase. He was only twenty-six years old—hell, how could I take him seriously as my uncle? And Edwina sounded like trouble. “So what’d she say when you told her about me?” I demanded suddenly. “Lemme guess. She said she didn’t want some piece-of-shit punk nephew of yours stinking up her fine life.”

  Al slapped a hand on my shoulder. I froze. His eyes bored into mine. I’d finally pissed him off. “Are you planning to rob us?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “Refuse to take a shower?”

  “What?”

  “Kill us in our sleep?”

  I shoved his hand away. I was furious. “Fuck you! No! You think I’m like that? I may not be a fucking college boy like you, but I have my own kind of honor—”

  “Easy, Nick. I’m just asking questions. If you don’t intend to cause us any trouble, then why shouldn’t we be glad you’re here?”

  “I . . . what? You’re trying to confuse me! Look, all I can do is give my word. Take it or leave it.”

  “Okay, I’m taking it. I have your word that you’re honest and trustworthy. So why are you yelling at me?”

  I looked at him morosely. “Because you play fucking mind games with me, and you’re good at it.”

  “I’m glad you’re here. No mind game.”

  “Yeah, well. Anytime you change your mind, I’ll leave.”

  “I won’t. You’ll just have to stick around and see if you can prove I’m a sucker, won’t you?”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I shifted awkwardly. “What about Edwina? You can’t make me believe your fancy wife wants me here. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “You don’t know her. Just be honest with her, too. Keep your hands clean and your mind open, and don’t say ‘fuck’ out loud unless you want to hear how well she says it back.”

  I stared at him. He unlocked the apartment door and shoved it open. “Honey,” he called, “we’re home.”

  I followed him into a luxurious living room of oriental rugs and stuffed bookcases, gold-trimmed furniture and paintings of half-naked European women surrounded by cherubs. At the center of that room stood Edwina Habersham Jacobs, small and chunky and perky-blonde, with a slit-eyed expression on her face when she looked at me, like a Persian cat studying a bird. She was dressed in a white pantsuit with bell-bottomed legs and a gold belt dangling around her butt. I had to admire a woman bold enough to emphasize a big butt. At the same time, I drew up in a tighter knot, expecting nothing but the cold shoulder from her. How many rich girls would invite their husband’s nephew to move in?

  “Welcome home!” She kissed Al quickly then studied me. “Good work. I see you got your weapon-wielding bandito to join our little gang. I’m proud of you.”

  “He’s got a solid defense, but I wouldn’t give up.” Al took me by one arm. I was too surprised to pull back. Me coming there was his wife’s idea, too? “Edwina, may I present my nephew, Mr. Nicholas Jakobek? Nick, may I present my wife. Edwina Habersham Jacobs? Okay, you’re both duly presented to each other. Now, go for the throat.” He stepped back. I offered her a handshake. She wrapped her strong little fingers around my big ones with a grip like a truck driver, and she continued to dissect me with her calm, cat eyes. “Nicholas,” she said firmly.

  “Edwina,” I said back. I nodded at the cherub paintings. “Von Hosterlitz, right?”

  “Why, yes.”

  I shrugged a long, narrow case off one shoulder and laid it atop my duffel. Her gaze went to it. “Your machete?”

  “My flute.”

  All the air in the apartment seemed to suck up through her flared nose. Al put a hand to his mouth and began to cough. She scrutinized me from the tips of my old western boots to the hand-clipped dark hair I wore long enough to hit my shoulders. She reached out suddenly and took one of my bruised hands, turning it, examining the fight marks. “You’re too smart to act this stupid. We’ll have to teach you better ways to fight for what you believe in.”

  “Some people only understand one thing.” I held up the swollen fist.

  She and Al traded a look that said I was raw material with a more entrenched ph
ilosophy than they’d expected. “That’s a debate for another night,” Al said.

  With Al bringing up the rear, Edwina led me to a frilly bedroom that looked as if only girls would sleep in it. “My mother and sisters usually stay here when they visit. But it’s yours, now. We’ll re-decorate as soon as possible.” She pointed to my duffel bag. “Do you have anything you want to put on the wall tonight, to make it feel less girly in here?”

  “Skulls.”

  She didn’t miss a beat. “Human?”

  “Coyote. I found them in the desert.”

  “Oh, good. I’ll tell my decorator to think ‘Southwestern.’ Or perhaps, ‘Pagan Sacrifice.’”

  I was embarrassed and said nothing. Behind me, Al made snuffling sounds and finally laughed out loud. “God, I can’t believe you two. I’m sorry. Sorry, Nick. It’s not appropriate.” His laughter became a strained groan, then faded. “Sorry. Oh, god. Sorry, for your mother. My sister. Margee. Sorry. Margee. Sacrifice. That’s what she was. A sacrifice to her own worst impulses and to social stigmas that didn’t make any sense.” He put his face in his hands. “If I’d only found her sooner. Nick, I’m sorry. You needed help with her and you didn’t get it. I’m glad you’re here, but I’m so sorry that she’s not.” Edwina went to him and put her arms around his neck. He swept her into a hug, and they held each other. I was just this stranger who couldn’t cry, couldn’t ask for help, didn’t know how. I stood there outside the circle of their comfort, envying them.

  “Come here,” Al ordered suddenly. He wiped his face and reached for me. I didn’t have a chance to back away. He wrapped an arm around me and kept the other around Edwina. “If anybody deserves sympathy, it’s you, Nick, not me.”

  “I don’t want any fucking sympathy.” My voice broke. But I didn’t move away, either.

  Al only hugged me harder and nodded at Edwina. “Tell Nick how it is in our home, and how we want the world to be.”

  She nodded. “All for one and one for all. It’s that simple, Nicholas.” The benediction, the rules, the expectation. If I wanted to stay, I had to do my part.

  I shrugged. “If it makes you happy, I can keep the coyote skulls in a drawer.”

  She smiled thinly. “You bet your ass you will.”

  AL AND EDWINA presented me to Edwina’s relatives, the Habershams. “Call it the out-of-town tryouts for your social debut,” Edwina said wryly. “In other words, if you’re going to be a jerk, Al wants you to practice your jerkhood on my family, first.”

  We flew to Maryland. Al bought me a suit. I ditched it in the airport men’s room and wore jeans with a frayed denim jacket stamped with Diablo on one shoulder. Al got a hard look on his face but forced a smile. “No problem. I’m a firm believer in bucking tradition and celebrating your own personal style.”

  Edwina, however, cut me no slack. “You owe us to two hundred dollars for that suit.”

  “Like you need the money. I didn’t ask for the suit. I didn’t want the suit. It’s not my style. I don’t want to be dressed up just so Al isn’t embarrassed by me.”

  “Look, Diablo, let’s understand the strum and drang of the family dynamics, here. Al bought you the suit because he thought it would make you feel more comfortable. He did for your sake, all right? Not his.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, and pretended not to care.

  The Habershams were easy, as it turned out. They all took one look at me, shit on their silk underwear, and headed for the martinis. At least that’s how it felt to me at the time. I was a jerk, and I did do my best to sound tough, even speaking with a sinister hint of the barrio in my voice, which only made me sound like Cheech Marin in a bad reefer movie.

  Edwina drank two gin-and-tonics on the flight back to Chicago, and even sucked the gin from the olives. “I’d say that went well.”

  Al looked out the plane window and said nothing.

  I felt bad, but of course, would never admit it.

  The Jacob family came next. Al talked me up as if I were a treasure he’d found in the attic. What guts. Most of the Jacobs were middle class Midwestern types, down-to-earth, either very conservative or very Catholic or both, and I figured out quickly that Al was the odd one. Not conservative, that is. Not particularly religious, either, at least not in a public way. I had to give Al credit for keeping a straight face when he stood by me in the hall of a downtown hotel where he held my so-called homecoming party. Weird Al and Diablo.

  But this time, I wore the suit. Edwina made me. It didn’t help.

  Half the Jacobs looked scared of me; the other half cried and prayed and thanked various saints for helping Al find me. Either way, I wasn’t won over. But I kept my mouth shut and didn’t upset Al’s pretty party by asking the one question I wanted answered: Why couldn’t my mother depend on any of you?

  Finally, a hunched little old lady in black garbadine and a flowered hat cornered me. “You hate and fear us all,” she whispered with a thick Polish accent. “Do not lie to me, I can tell.”

  After a moment spent considering my options, I nodded. She grasped my hands with her blue-veined claws, pressing a black-beaded rosary in my palms. “These I brought all the way from the old country. These belonged to my mother and her mother before her. These hold the prayers of our family. Have faith in our family—your family,” she whispered, “and when you have the courage to hear the truth about your poor mother, ask me. Do not ask the others. I’m the only one who knows.”

  She was my Great Aunt Sophie, the last of the immigrant Jakobeks.

  And she was right. I was so rattled I didn’t have the courage to ask her, then.

  And not later, either, the more I thought about it.

  Noble arrogance is a hard nut to crack.

  AL WAS THE QUIET, serious type, but Edwina was a firecracker. Prissy and vain and smug. But no bullshit or hidden agendas. She yelled at me in Latin, and I learned enough Latin to yell back. She dragged me to court to keep me under surveillance, so I spent the first few months of my life in Chicago watching her and Al work. They had a mission. They stood up for ideals that mattered—truth, justice, the American way, whatever that really means in the trenches of real life.

  You have to picture Edwina in court, dressed in prim little jackets with big, bow-tie scarves and those calf-length skirts women wore in the 1970’s. She looked like a ferocious blonde librarian. But she was great. She snapped out complex prosecutorial punches in her blue-blooded Maryland accent so quickly people didn’t know what hit them. I loved to watch bad-ass defendants gape at her. The dumb bastards never stood a chance. Al was just as impressive in his own way. He turned his summations into speeches on behalf of humanity. At the end of a typical trial the jurors might not be certain Lonnie The Loan Shark deserved ten years for breaking a man’s kneecaps, but they sure as hell knew that every American had a constitutional right to life, liberty, and a pair of legs that bent in the right direction.

  Every night after dinner I sat with Al and Edwina at their gilded dining room table, where they debated the cases they won and lost. “What do you think, Nick?” they asked me all the time, and eventually I began to tell them, as politely as I could, that they were naïve and had no clue how bad most people really were. Most people, I said, deserved worse than they got.

  “Nicholas is a hanging judge,” Edwina liked to say. She thought my eye-for-an-eye philosophy was quaint.

  But Al didn’t. “Civilization is built on higher standards than revenge. People of good conscience have to maintain those standards even when their emotions tell them otherwise. Even when the object of their ethical consideration hasn’t earned it. Society as a whole deserves better than our basic instincts.”

  To which my basic response was always: “Some fuckers are evil, and they need to be killed.” This would set Al off on a table-pounding crusade to convince my higher conscience otherw
ise. I just let him talk. We had grown up on different sides of the sewer that runs through the lives of good people. I never said so, but my motivations always boiled down to a simple misery.

  If I’d killed all the men who had turned my mother into a stoned, high-class whore, she might still be alive.

  Al and Edwina believed in the system—that vague system by which people agree on all things good and holy. They believed in each other, and they even believed in me. Although I didn’t make it easy for them.

  I was hanging out in the back of a nearly empty courtroom one day watching Edwina try to convince a jury to convict some loser whose idea of fun was slapping his wife around. She was giving them one of her feminist rah-rah speeches. Behind me I heard some guy mumbling, “Yeah, blah blah blah. Your pussy-whipped husband needs to slap your fat ass a few times, lady.”

  I turned around and looked at this fleshy little turd who was scribbling in a reporter’s notepad. He felt my stare and looked up with a greasy expression. “You have a problem, punk?”

  “You’re talking about my aunt and uncle.”

  “Oh? Hey, that means you’re Al Jacob’s punk bastard nephew.” He smiled. “I heard about you, kid. Righteous Al’s nasty little family secret. Didn’t your mother croak down in Mexico with a needle in her arm and her legs wrapped around some rich spic?”

  I sucker-punched him. Blood bloomed between his teeth, and as I watched, a front incisor slid neatly from its socket and fell out. His eyes rolled back, and he swayed forward hard enough to make a loud smack when his forehead hit the back of the bench where I sat. Edwina, the judge, the jurors, the bailiffs, the wife-beater, his lawyer, and the wife all rushed to the scene. They weren’t sure what had happened.

  “Haywood Kenney,” one juror whispered. “Crime reporter from the Tribune. Maybe he’s dead.”

  “I hope so,” another whispered back. “He lives in my apartment building. He’s a jerk.”

  Haywood Kenney lay sideways with his head against an elderly black man who happened to be sitting near him. The old man pushed Kenney away. “Nasty white boy,” the old man said.